Ideological Gatekeepers and the Discourse of Resistance

Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls was not the first to criticize Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, in which a Muslim president is elected in an imagined future France. Following trade practices, Houellebecq’s publisher Flammarion distributed promotional copies of the novel to selected journalists before its official publication. On 2 January, Laurent Joffrin of the left-wing newspaper Libération said that Submission had an ‘obvious political resonance’ and that the date of its publication would be remembered as the day of the ‘emergence – or return – of far-right ideas in literature’.Reference Joffrin⁴ Four days later, socialist politician Alexis Corbière participated in a live debate with Sébastien Chenu of the right-wing Marine Blue Gathering coalition who, like Marine le Pen and other representatives of the National Front (NF), thought that Houellebecq’s novel depicted a possible future.Reference Collard and Phillipot⁵ In opposition to this standpoint, Corbière said that the novelist, though entitled to artistic freedom, presented a ‘completely false idea’ in saying that Sharia law could be introduced in France: ‘The overwhelming majority of our Muslim fellow citizens are secularized people who respect the laws of the Republic. They are fed up with this discourse that claims that a Muslim equals a fundamentalist, as the book says. … It is a form of xenophobia’. Like Manuel Valls, Corbière more or less explicitly categorized the novel as xenophobic in that it adjoins a certain discourse established by others, i.e. the populist nationalist discourse of the National Front (NF). François Hollande, then President of the Republic, expressed himself more carefully. He urged the population not to be consumed by fear – this was before the Charlie Hebdo shootings – and to remember that the ideas of submission and invasion have a history.Reference Vertaldi⁶ Though not associating Submission with religious hatred and defamation, Hollande, by his use of the word ‘fear’, can be grouped with the opinion makers around Valls and Corbière who categorized the novel as xenophobic discourse. Indeed, when the word discourse (discours) is used in this context, it alludes to the Foucauldian hypothesis that linguistic practice is controlled and organized as an exercise of power.Reference Foucault⁷ To say that a novel adheres to a xenophobic discourse, then, is to suggest that it functions within a structure of shared values and objectives. Thus, it can be argued that the speaker thereby downplays both the novel’s uniqueness and its semantic and pragmatic flexibility, i.e. its openness to different interpretations and its principally noncommittal aspect as an artwork. Arguably, to publicly categorize Submission as xenophobic discourse is in itself an exercise of power, the articulation of a ‘discourse of resistance’ to this novel and to its originator.

Edwy Plenel, cofounder of the online journal Mediapart, and former managing editor of Le Monde, adhered to this discourse of resistance. On 6 January, Plenel, who had recently written a book entitled Pour les Musulmans (For the Muslims), entered the studio of the national TV show C à vous refusing to discuss Houellebecq’s novel – even though he had been invited to do just that. Instead of debating the novel, which he thought conveyed anti-Islamic myths, Plenel criticized the media for wasting so much airtime on Houellebecq, an ‘Islamophobe’.⁸ On a different show, radio and TV personality Ali Baddou announced that he felt insulted by the novel because he is of Muslim culture: ‘When I opened this book I felt reduced to someone who longs for stay-home women, who would like to have four or five wives and to impose his laws and morals onto others. Is this how we should characterize Islam in France in 2015? Yes, I felt insulted’.Reference Baddou⁹ Though not explicitly categorizing the novel as part of a ‘discourse of fear’, Baddou participated in the discourse of resistance in that he categorized Submission as insulting to Muslims.

One essential characteristic of this critical stance is the firm and direct link established from the writer to the characters and ideas expressed in his or her fictional universe. To this group of critics, there is no separation between the writer and their fiction, and no discursive space for humour, irony or satire. They claim that the novel must be read literally. The fact that professional opinion makers draw such conclusions – or pretend to do so – is unsurprising since their designated task is to identify political signals and respond to them with effective rhetoric. Author and professor of literature Jérôme Meizoz published an article in Les Temps Modernes in which he drew similar conclusions.Reference Meizoz¹⁰ In Jean-Paul Sartre’s old journal, Meizoz solemnly declared that after the publication of Submission, he could no longer have his students read Houellebecq’s works. Meizoz did not stop at the latest novel, but now censored all of Houellebecq’s works – texts that he had earlier found aesthetically interesting and pedagogically useful. Writing in the form of a public letter between intellectuals – alluding to the antagonistic correspondence published in the same journal between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in June of 1952 – Meizoz expressed a rhetoric of guilt by association in revealing, for instance, that police records indicated that the hard drive found at the apartment of the Charlie Hebdo killers contained several references to Houellebecq’s books. As for Submission, Meizoz found it lacked conviction and was full of clichés; he considered it a failure. Most of his objections were ideological in nature: Meizoz accused Houellebecq of reproducing opportunistic ideas and of being inspired by the phantasms of Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Zemmour, and Renaud Camus (Ref. Reference Meizoz10, pp. 79–80). French writer Renaud Camus coined the expression ‘the great replacement’ (‘le grand remplacement’) in 2011 when he published a book with this title. Renaud Camus argued that because of immigration and birth rates, the occidental civilization of France would be replaced by an African civilization within a few generations. Social scientists have since refuted Renaud Camus’ controversial claim.Reference Larsson¹¹ In fact, even leading representatives of the National Front, such as Marine Le Pen, have distanced themselves from it.Reference Valerio¹² As for the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, his 2013 book L’identité malheureuse similarly linked the weakening of French identity to extensive immigration and unsuccessful integration. Eric Zemmour is a conservative columnist and essayist who in Le suicide français regretted the ideological turn of French culture and politics after 1968 and the loss of traditional values. Le suicide français was published in the autumn of 2014 and became a bestseller in France. Meizoz was not alone in associating Houellebecq’s novel with Zemmour’s essay. Edwy Plenel also used Zemmour’s book as a reason not to discuss Submission, as he felt France had just endured ‘three months of Zemmourization’ and could not stand additional rhetoric of the sort.Reference Foucault⁷ Also, Tareq Oubrou, who heads the mosque of Bordeaux, claimed that Submission appeared to be a softer version of Le suicide français.¹³

Meizoz’s ‘break-up letter’ in Les temps modernes was dominated by political argumentation, references to the Charlie Hebdo shootings, and Houellebecq’s possible opinions on societal matters. Apart from associating Houellebecq with terrorists and nationalists, Meizoz quoted Houellebecq admitting in an interview to being ‘probably Islamophobic’.Reference Chrisafis¹⁴ The text published in Les temps modernes resulted from a personal awakening through which Meizoz came to terms with his position as a literary scholar. Since the attack on Charlie Hebdo, he wrote, ‘everything has changed’ (Ref. Reference Meizoz10, p. 83). Because a professor of literature can choose what to read and discuss, ‘teaching and conducting research is primarily a political gesture’, Meizoz declared. In the spirit of Sartre, and in opposition to the phlegmatic scholar character who narrates Submission, Meizoz decided he needed to act on this insight. He concluded: ‘I do not wish to give place any more to your writings in my capacity as a scholar operating within the public-service sector’ (Ref. Reference Meizoz10, p. 83). In conclusion, not only opinion makers but also literary scholars have reacted politically to Submission. In a scholarly environment in which provocative literature is actively studied rather than passively endured, banning a Goncourt-winning writer’s work on these grounds is remarkable. (Michel Houellebecq won the French novel prize Prix Goncourt in 2010, for La carte et le territoire.) Much literature is studied, not despite the challenging ideas it reproduces, but because of those ideas or, more precisely, because the rhetorical and poetic means by which they are reproduced constitute meaningful objects of study in that they expose literary discourse’s complex reading modes and illustrate how literature can operate both politically and aesthetically without a clear distinction between them. As any recurring reader would perceive – and in this matter the critics’ accounts, including Meizoz’s, are more or less concordant – unconventional ideas are fundamental to Houellebecq’s poetics, as are the modes of representing them through fictional characters and anonymous narrators. Nevertheless, to stop at these ideas, without discussing the modalities by which they are presented or the relationship between the fictional universe and the historical world, is to read fiction as nonfiction. Realist novels such as Submission – or any other Houellebecq novel for that matter – are partly nonfictional in that they refer to historical reality. A racist comment remains a racist comment even if it is pronounced by a fictional character: it is written by a real-world person with real-world readers in mind. What is remarkable about nonfictional readings of Houellebecq is that they disregard the literary context and modus of his work as well as the fact that its meaning – if there is to be any distinction at all between realism and journalism – is determined by the totality of the work in question and the polyphony of voices surrounding it, each expressing its particular moods and tonalities and conveying its particular background story, shortcomings, and ambitions.

It appears pertinent to reiterate that debates including similar positions and arguments have recurred throughout the history of criticism. Some of the most obvious examples in French literature are the trials and debates concerning the autonomy and responsibility of the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961), and Jean Genet (1910–1986). In this essay, however, I will use the example of Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) to illustrate the recurring dualist reception structure in which conflicting views of literature and morals are opposed. More precisely, I will refer to the case of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, a work known to have shocked the public by leaving readers completely to their own moral devices. While earlier fiction writers would supplement morally challenging stories with didactic narrators, forewords, or epilogues articulating the appropriate conclusions to be drawn from the work and applied to the social world, Flaubert omitted this paratext and let his readers judge for themselves who was to blame and why. It appears pertinent to recap that the main character, Emma Bovary, before killing herself, is presented as a passionate reader of fiction. Her reading, it seems, reinforces her dreamy, ambiguous, and vulnerable character. Without explicit condemnation from any narrative authority, Emma Bovary joyfully commits adultery and egoistically indebts her family. In present times, a novel like Madame Bovary would hardly be considered a danger to society because the modern reader would understand that Emma is by no means presented as a positive example. In the France of 1856–1857 (the novel was published as a serial in 1856 before it was published as a single volume in 1857), however, society was not accustomed to non-didactic ‘immoral’ fictions, so Gustave Flaubert and his editor were brought to trial for outraging public morality and religion. Society thus accused Flaubert of promoting the decadence he himself had warned of by representing his protagonist as a negative example.

The trial of Flaubert displays interesting analogies with Houellebecq’s reception over one and half centuries later. First, as Elisabeth Ladenson has demonstrated in Dirt for Art’s Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita, the moral judgements targeting Flaubert depended on the expected demography of his readership (Ref. Reference Ladenson15, pp. 62–63). While, in Flaubert’s case, patriarchal society was out to defend female readers from being corrupted by Madame Bovary, Meizoz aspired to protect students from being affected by Submission’s potentially demoralizing influence. Meizoz’s line of argumentation was remarkably similar to that of Flaubert’s prosecutor, namely, that ‘the officially designated function of literature was to uplift the good spirit by good example’ (Ref. Reference Ladenson15, p. 26). Bad morals in literature, according to the protagonists of the discourse of resistance, signify bad morals in the writer and potentially create bad morals in the public. Similarly, Kajsa Ekis Ekman alerted the public to the dubious representation, in Submission, of ‘just another offended white male who becomes a racist when strangers come between him and his desired sex objects’, as if the very act of representing racism were despicable.Reference Ekis Ekman¹⁶ This gatekeeping criticism was ideological insofar as ‘the practico–social function [was] more important than the theoretical function (function as knowledge)’.Reference Althusser and Brewster¹⁷ These critics, specialized in literature, refrained from exploring the aesthetics or philosophy of the work. Submission was not used, within the discourse of resistance, as a possible carrier of knowledge. Instead, these literary critics openly used their platforms to shape opinion in line with the journalists and politicians quoted earlier who classified Houellebecq as racist, xenophobic or Islamophobic. Houellebecq’s novel, within the discourse of resistance, functioned as a means to convey political messages and build an antiracist ethos.

In sum, it seems reasonable to suggest that the analogies between this discourse of resistance and the argumentation of Flaubert’s prosecutor stem from the fact that both Houellebecq and Flaubert challenge conventional thinking through realist fiction that includes negative examples without overt moral orientation, evoking similarly oriented responses. In both gatekeeping discourses, practico–social functions took the upper hand over philosophy and knowledge. While the protagonists of the discourse of resistance, acting on personal convictions of ideological emergency, felt obliged to disregard philosophy and aesthetics, Flaubert’s prosecutor similarly had a particular goal in mind: to have the novelist convicted. It appears unsurprising that, in legal discourse, Flaubert’s prosecutor, Ernest Pinard, claimed that immoral fictions reveal bad morals in the writer. As Dominick LaCapra has pointed out in Madame Bovary on Trial, ‘Pinard’s understanding of the intention or “thought” of the author is in keeping with his focus upon the text of the novel. For him, intention is fully “embodied”: it is what the author means to say in the text’ (Ref. Reference LaCapra18, pp. 34–35). This statement was echoed 160 years later when Houellebecq’s critics fleetingly associated the bad morals of Submission with its writer’s character and intentions.

If Flaubert’s prosecutor spoke like Houellebecq’s antagonists, his defence lawyer largely mirrored the representatives of the discourse of aesthetics in that he, as LaCapra has underscored, understood intention ‘in a broader and less discriminating way’ (Ref. Reference LaCapra18, p. 35). Because of the fictional contract, intention is problematic in literary discourse. It is more productive to reflect on the principal relevance of the writer’s intentions and ideological standpoints. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that Michel Houellebecq is Islamophobic, does this automatically mean that his novels threaten Islam or Western humanism? It is impossible to exclude the possibility that some critics did believe so, especially if one considers that the book was published on the day of the Charlie Hebdo shootings when Islamophobia seemed a plausible reaction. The fact that parts of the discourse of resistance were formed the day before (Plenel) and many months after the attack (Ekman) does not counter this argument, because terrorism has repeatedly been mentioned in debates on migration and Islam since the attacks of 11 September 2001. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suggest that the discourse of resistance can also be understood in light of the impact of debates on Houellebecq, in general, and the political enunciation scene his novel set up.

In conclusion, the prosecutor’s blaming of Flaubert for his ‘lack of heroic characters, banality of subject, and absence of identifiable moral viewpoint’ (Ref. Reference Ladenson15, p. 24) appears a model for the gatekeeping criticism that met Michel Houellebecq in more recent times. Flaubert’s prosecutor and Houellebecq’s denigrators seemed to share the view that literature should serve a morally uplifting purpose – or at least uphold the status quo (Ref. Reference Ladenson15, p. 21). While in Flaubert’s society, as Ladenson has remarked, the status quo was to be understood from the perspective of Christian morality, the status quo means something slightly different in Houellebecq’s time. Although Western European morals are still based on Christian ethics, the values and policies protected by the discourse of resistance differ in that they serve a society in transformation: Houellebecq’s critics were defending a status quo of ongoing migration from Muslim countries and of ongoing development towards a multicultural society. As for Valls and many of the other politicians who expressed themselves after Charlie Hebdo, ‘fear’ was a frequently used and emphasized word. The status quo they were defending was a society without fear, and they alerted the public to the danger that Houellebecq’s novel would frighten Europeans. Houellebecq responded to this critique on French radio by saying it was not his book that was frightening the public, as people were already uneasy before he wrote it, despising journalists, politicians and judges.Reference Cohen¹⁹

Liberal Reception

The history of criticism has been marked by inconclusive debates over who is to be considered the main protagonist of literary communication: the writer, the reader, or some other agent or combination of agents. How literary works are received depends on contemporary aesthetic, political and cultural currents, and on contemporary literary canons. Hans Robert Jauss named this set of criteria the ‘horizon of expectations’ and designated the reader the main protagonist of literary communication.Reference Jauss²⁰ Wolfgang Iser provided a more dehistoricized model of the reading process, arguing that each literary text creates an ‘implied reader’ by means of its ‘network of response-inviting structures’.Reference Iser²¹ Michael Riffaterre described encounters between readers and a literary text as multiple performances of a partiture that never sound exactly the same.Reference Riffaterre²² Similarly, Hans Georg Gadamer viewed aesthetic reception as a kind of game or dance, adding that in the course of reading it does not matter who ‘leads’ since the reader/dancer is absorbed by the activity.Reference Gadamer²³ The question of subjectivity is crucial when discussing literature and values. George Poulet described the reading phenomenon as a process of ‘making way not only for a stream of words, images, and foreign ideas, but also for the very principle from which these ideas emanate, the principle that houses them’.Reference Poulet²⁴ To perform a literary reading, then, is to make way for a provisional subjectivity that is simultaneously foreign and owned, a subjectivity that results from a process of decoding, valuing and living the text, and placing the work in a personal and social context. Ideas expressed in a novel are thereby considered from a more internal perspective than are ideas encountered in social discourse. The process of reading novels allows us to consider foreign ideas and values against the familiar backdrop of our own identity. When reading ideologically challenging writers, as LaCapra argues with Madame Bovary in mind,

Houellebecq’s and Flaubert’s stories potentially challenge our faculties of moral and ideological judgement, not by explicitly reinterpreting social references and historical context, as journalists and politicians do, but by letting the characters’ inner and outer behaviour incite us to see new meanings in our world and try out new interpretative models. The fact that reading is typically a solitary process does not mean that readers are completely isolated but that they remain persons subject to social control. Self-forgetting though they may be, fiction readers do not cease to be morally conscious and socially responsible human beings. Martine Burgos pertinently reiterated that reading clubs and social life in general exercise a certain control over fiction readers, especially when the material is ethically challenging.Reference Burgos²⁵ Along similar lines, Martha NussbaumReference Nussbaum²⁶ asserts that fiction reading nourishes

To appreciate and recommend ideologically challenging literature such as Submission, it appears necessary to trust the reader’s capacity to judge the work – not only from a purely aesthetic point of view but also from an ethical perspective. Moreover, liberal readers tend to downplay the importance of the writer’s personal opinions, instead emphasizing the individual freedom and responsibility of the reader. In opposition to those who claimed that Submission exposed Houellebecq’s personal Islamophobia, Claire Devarrieux of Libération maintained that the writer’s inner thoughts on a future Muslim president of France remained indeterminable.Reference Devarrieux²⁷ Interestingly, Libération is a left-wing paper, just like the Swedish Aftonbladet whose critic Åsa Linderborg also took a liberal stance and defended Houellebecq’s work, calling it a fantastic, provocative, entertaining and demanding novel of ideas.Reference Linderborg²⁸ The representatives of the liberal reading mode noted the novel’s semantic and ideological flexibility, qualities seen as valuable rather than threatening. Liberal readers are inclined to attach labels such as ‘satire’ to provocative texts, emphasizing the possibility of complex and veiled message structures. Besides Devarrieux and Linderborg, a liberal reading was carried out by Jean d’Ormesson of the French Academy who characterized Submission as an ‘amusing and tragic satire in the style of Jonathan Swift’.Reference Clermont²⁹ Similarly, Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewing Submission for The New York Times, called it ‘strongly satirical’. Distancing himself from those who claimed that the novel mocked the underprivileged, Knausgaard went on to explain that ‘its satire is directed toward the intellectual classes, among whom no trace is found of idealism, and not a shadow of will to defend any set of values’.Reference Knausgaard and Aitken³⁰ The novel, according to this reading, deals with contemporary society’s ideological confusion without seriously presenting any alternatives. However, it calls to the reader’s attention that ideological and political vacuums tend to be filled at some point. Knausgaard is one of many critics who have praised Houellebecq’s clear vision of today’s Western society, although Submission’s narrator refrains from looking into his own motives and from answering the questions raised:

Much like Flaubert’s lawyer, Knausgaard praises ambivalence, revealing a liberal reading mode. Along similar lines, Marcela Iacub stated that Houellebecq’s political opinions are irrelevant to the readers of his fiction:

In response to Iacub’s last question one could argue that the discourse of resistance, by alerting the public to the dangers of Houellebecq’s book, elevates its importance and implies that Houellebecq’s views are more important and powerful than the reader’s own opinions or than reigning contemporary norms. Iacub’s mocking tone reveals that her position took shape in opposition to another position. Although liberal readings stand on different reception-theoretical bases than do more openly political readings, they should not be viewed as principally apolitical. Iacub’s critique is political in that it expresses resistance to resistance.

In addition to the above-mentioned representatives of the liberal reading mode, the nineteenth-century literature scholar and Houellebecq specialist Agathe Novak-Lechevalier stressed the aesthetic qualities and semantic heterogeneity of Submission. In a review published in Libération, Novak-Lechevalier claimed that the title of the novel itself inspires a reading mode that actualizes parallel interpretations. The word ‘submission’, asserted Novak-Lechevalier, is not only a translation of ‘Islam’, but the term is also heavily charged with erotic and political connotations, as is Houellebecq’s novel as a whole.Reference Novak-Lechevalier³²

Italian critic Antonio Scurati adheres to the liberal reading mode in considering the unorthodox moral stance of Submission not as threatening contemporary humanist doxa but as permitting one to see the world from a new perspective. Houellebecq’s nihilism, Scurati remarks, is not some puerile depreciation of all values; rather, it is a way of handling the risk and difficulty of making sense of the chaotic post-religious world in which not much can be taken for granted.Reference Scurati and Novak-Lechevalier³³ In addition, Adrian-George Matus claimed that Submission is ‘a highly aesthetic novel’ that ‘reflects a collective anxiety of the French contemporary society: the fear of radical otherness’.Reference Matus³⁴ This fear, according to this line of criticism, should not be silenced or ignored but should be overt, aestheticized, analysed and discussed. Liberal readers, then, should not refrain from political reasoning and social commitment, but should instigate political discussions without condemning the work or its writer.

French parliamentary records reveal that Submission has been a topic within the legislative process on several occasions. Regarding the matter of opposing reading modes, it is interesting to note that republican deputy Annie Genevard, in September 2015, quoted Manuel Valls’ reproachful speech of 7 January as an example of hypocrisy regarding artistic freedom: ‘When defending artistic freedom, we had better not become the biter bit. In this respect, I call to your attention the prime minister’s reaction when Michel Houellebecq’s Submission was published’. According to the official records of the National Assembly, several members of the left-wing parliamentary group asked, ‘So what?’, whereupon Genevard explained that Valls’ comment questioned the value of Houellebecq’s work. The left-wing group protested anew and Genevard silenced them by quoting Valls’ speech word for word, at which the republican group applauded, according to the parliamentary archives.³⁵ It is not surprising to see the left-wing parliamentarians defend the prime minister of Hollande’s government; nonetheless, it is interesting to see the debate about Submission spreading through political institutions.

To sum up, in opposition to those who claimed that Michel Houellebecq’s Submission is Islamophobic and a danger to society, several critics defended a more liberal reading mode, noting that depicting a certain society does not necessarily mean promoting or contesting it. These critics reused Flaubert’s defence lawyer’s argument that the writer ‘portrays vice to promote virtue’ (Ref. Reference Ladenson15, p. 26). The demarcation line between the two groups of critics does not primarily concern societal values, i.e. views of Islam or increasing immigration; rather, what distinguishes them is primarily their posited conception of literary discourse and of the reader’s capacity to interpret and judge. That said, there is no effective platform in the field of literary criticism for xenophobic discourse, so it is possible that some of the liberal critics were promoting Houellebecq for political reasons. If one thinks that Submission promotes racism, or some other extremist value cluster that one endorses, elevating the book and its author would be a more effective method than would speaking up for tabooed values. Since intention and ideology are largely concealed by the conditions of literary discourse – i.e. the fictional contract, primacy of form, principal semantic ambiguity, etc. – reception texts (including literary criticism, political speeches, and legal argumentation) are more fruitful objects of study than are literary texts whose obliqueness intrigues us and questions us without providing definite answers. The problem has been more clearly expressed by LaCapra as:

What makes realist fiction interesting from a political perspective, then, is that it can process and project sociologically and historically relevant material without controlling its effects and without permitting outside control. This process, as LaCapra has pointed out, is neither symptomatic nor critical but has sociocultural agency all the same. To an opinion maker, uncontrollability is disturbing, a problem to resolve. On the other hand, ideological ambiguity also permits the opinion maker to suggest readings that fit his or her political agenda. What about critics who prioritize aesthetic experience and ignore personal and societal interests, ecstatically delivering themselves to the artwork in the spirit of Hans Georg Gadamer? Do such critics have a place in Houellebecq’s reception structure?Reference Georg Gadamer and Gadamer³⁶ Each reader of Houellebecq’s works is subjected to this conflict of interest: one must consciously or unconsciously choose to what extent historical, social, and political considerations are to be integrated in the decoding of the text. The debate on Submission is largely structured around this question: like the Bovary trial, it gives voice to two opposing attitudes towards literature. These attitudes have political meaning and theoretically coincide with political ideology insofar as liberal values such as individual freedom and responsibility privilege literature that alerts the public to institutional oppression and group pressure. In practice, however, liberal readers do not necessarily support liberal values, as the examples of Åsa Linderborg and Claire Devarrieux illustrate.Reference Linderborg and Devvarieux³⁷ A liberal reading mode can be used to promote any ideology, although liberal criticism typically does not draw definite political conclusions because it maintains literature’s discursive autonomy.

Houellebecq’s Standpoint

Since the formalist paradigm of the mid-twentieth century and Roland Barthes’ famous declaration of ‘the death of the author’,Reference Barthes³⁸ literary criticism has regained interest in the author’s position, intentions and morals. Rather than re-initiating older biographical interpretation models that deceptively explained fictional works on the basis of the writer’s personal life, recent criticism deduces a more complex relationship between life and work, emphasizing the aesthetic values of autobiographical reference and so-called ‘autofictional’ play in which the writer stages himself as both a narrated and tangible protagonist. As Liesbeth Korthals Altes has emphasized, Michel Houellebecq is often viewed as a representative of this trend.Reference Korthals Altes and van Wesemael³⁹ Raphaël Baroni has pointed out that the most provocative novels are also novels that induce readers to reflect on the opinions of the writer.Reference Baroni⁴⁰ The logic of the media supports this quest for authors’ inner motives, serving writers who play public roles around and through their books, as Philippe Lejeune has demonstrated.Reference Lejeune⁴¹ Following this media logic, the questions of news anchor David Pujadas to Houellebecq on national TV the day before Submission’s publication focused on the writer’s own views on Islam and contemporary French politics. Michel Houellebecq categorically dodged such questions, on both TV and radio. On the leading French morning radio show ‘7 à 9’, Houellebecq claimed to refrain from voting and to have little respect for French politicians. ‘They really are not up to the task’, he said to radio producer Patrick Cohen several hours before the Charlie Hebdo shootings – in other words, the day before Valls’ condemnatory speech.Reference Cohen⁴² When it comes to representing politicians in his novels, Houellebecq practices no discrimination, mocking both left-wing and right-wing politicians. In The Elementary Particles, for instance, Houellebecq’s character Bruno says he ‘could have joined the National Front but what’s the point of eating sauerkraut with idiots? Anyhow, right-wing women don’t exist and they fuck paratroopers’ (Ref. Reference Houellebecq43, p. 196). In Submission, the main character distances himself from the right-wing character Godefroy Lempereur: ‘I nearly asked Lempereur “Are you rather Catholic, fascist, or a mixture of the two?” before getting a hold on myself. I clearly had lost contact with the right-wing intellectuals, I didn’t know how to deal with them at all’.Reference Houellebecq⁴⁴

Michel Houellebecq’s disturbing statement on Islam as the stupidest religion, for which he was sued (and acquitted) in 2002, understandably leads many readers towards an Islamophobic interpretation of Submission. In addition, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights in France listed Michel Houellebecq’s third novel Platform as a text that expressed hostility towards Islam.Reference Robert-Diard⁴⁵ Salman Rushdie, in this era, defended Michel Houellebecq’s right to create immoral characters, and declared in The Guardian that ‘within a literary text, it must be possible to create characters of every sort. If novelists can’t depict Nazis or bigots without being accused of being Nazis or bigots, then they can’t do their work properly’.Reference Rushdie⁴⁶ Since then, Houellebecq has distanced himself from the statement, claiming that additional readings of the Qur’an have made him understand Islam better: ‘All things considered there is room for negotiation. You need a serious dose of dishonesty to interpret the Qur’an like the Jihadists do’, Houellebecq said in January 2015.Reference Cohen⁴⁷ All the same, he found himself obliged to explain in interviews that Submission is not Islamophobic.Reference Leménager⁴⁸ It appears as though the 2002 provocation along with diverse negative statements on Islam in Platform have created what Jon Helt Haarder has named a ‘biographic irreversibility’, that is, a piece of biographical information regarding the author that is stuck in readers’ heads and cannot be separated from the interpretation of his works.Reference Haarder⁴⁹ In light of his earlier statement, seeing Houellebecq create a scenario in which a Muslim president is elected in France naturally raises one’s suspicions. On 6 September 2015, Houellebecq gave support to this legend in an interview with The Guardian saying that he is probably Islamophobic. ‘It’s not my role to be responsible’, he added. ‘I don’t feel responsible. […] The role of a novel is to entertain readers, and fear is one of the most entertaining things there is.’ Furthermore, the author added to his earlier positive statement on the Qur’an that ‘objectively, there’s just as little chance of Muslims reading the Qur’an as Christians reading the Bible. So what really counts in both cases is who is the clergy, or middleman, or interpreter. And in the case of Islam, that’s very open’.¹³ During the same period, Houellebecq admitted on French TV that he had exploited a fear that exists in French society, an anxiety that he believes has to do with secularization.⁵⁰ Houellebecq here picks up a trope from The Elementary Particles in which religion is compared to the hot water of a radiator system, and the hero reflects on how long a society can function without religion (Ref. Reference Cohen42, p. 162). After the technical solution, i.e. cloning, to the problems of contemporary secular Western society (e.g. solitude, nihilism and depression) that he presented in The Elementary Particles, the Houellebecq of Submission tried Islam as a solution to these problems. The fact that the author now admitted to being ‘probably Islamophobic’ and to exploiting people’s fear of Islam can be understood as a way of adding fuel to the debate and staying relevant during the fall of 2015 when Submission was released in Great Britain and in the USA. Nevertheless, the writer categorically refuted the political effects of literature: ‘I don’t know any examples of a novel that changed the course of history. Other things have changed the course of history – essays, the Communist Manifesto, things like that – but not novels’, Houellebecq said when news presenter David Pujadas interviewed him on the day before Submission’s publication.⁵¹ He developed this thought in Le Figaro later that year when the journal’s reporter compared him to Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Zemmour, Pascal Bruckner and Michel Onfray.

Indeed, fiction and nonfiction are different matters. Nonetheless social psychological research suggests that reading a work of fiction can change the readers’ voting habits, which indicates a kind of political influence.Reference Kaufman and Libby⁵³ Although changing a vote is a different matter, the possibility can hardly be excluded. While the British Parliament has only discussed Michel Houellebecq’s statements outside of his books,⁵⁴ members of its French equivalent, the National Assembly, have cited Houellebecq’s fictional works – more precisely the novel Submission – in political argumentation concerning various law propositions. For example, in a debate on a possible reorganization of the territorial structure of France, republican parliamentarian Nicolas Dhuicq cited Submission in his argumentation, claiming that Michel Houellebecq was ‘perfectly right in his analyses’.⁵⁵ The novel was also invoked in a proposition to change the law on religious freedom, a proposal in which Houellebecq’s character Mohammed Ben Abbes was cited as exemplifying ‘falsely sympathetic’ images of political Islam.Reference Larrivé⁵⁶ On top of this, both Submission and other Houellebecq texts have been referred to in numerous debates among politicians in the media, some of which are quoted above. It appears reasonable to conclude that Houellebecq’s statement that a novelist can never have political influence is rather disingenuous.

The notion of ideological fiction is far from controversial. In Authoritarian Fictions, Susan Suleiman defined the roman à these as a realist novel that comes across as a pedagogical vehicle aspiring to demonstrate the truth of a political, philosophical, scientific, or religious doctrine.Reference Suleiman⁵⁷ Michel Houellebecq has presented many lessons in his novels and his narrators have engaged in dialogues with philosophers such as Comte, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. As online magazine Slate revealed, Houellebecq has quoted scientific texts and copied segments of information from Wikipedia.Reference Glad⁵⁸ However, nobody has yet successfully argued that Houellebecq has written any novel specifically to demonstrate the truth of a political doctrine. I concur with Bruno Viard that Houellebecq is not a politically driven writer.Reference Viard⁵⁹ He merely reflects on the conditions of humanity and on what makes us lean towards different values, positions and votes. More than anything else, as Scurati has remarked, Houellebecq’s project is intended to expose serious problems that have been ignored or avoided by politicians and journalists, but without the author taking a stand himself. Houellebecq’s refusal to assume political positions has interchangeably been interpreted as a satirical approach, as expressing nihilism, or even as silent approval of deeply immoral behaviours such as racism and misogyny. Houellebecq’s detached posture may also be viewed from an aesthetic point of view. In a letter to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, Michel Houellebecq has described his adult life and writings as an aesthetic reproduction of his father’s characteristic gesture of retreat.Reference Houellebecq and Henri-Lévy⁶⁰ He has expressed this aesthetic stance in one of his poems:

Reducing Houellebecq’s literary project to an aestheticized gesture of withdrawal is an oversimplification, but the stance projected in the above poem and in his letter to Lévy accords with the attitude displayed in interviews on political matters. Although no consistent ideological superstructure is evident, Houellebecq’s novels are full of referential anchorage and political content – not only in Submission but also in Whatever, where economic liberalism is critiqued, and in The Elementary Particles, where the political groupings formed in May 1968 are soundly thrashed. It seems reasonable to suggest that this referential play, along with Houellebecq’s position as a publicly known reference himself, is one reason why many politicians use Submission in their practice.